The other day, I was using a laptop for general desktop use when its keyboard began to act up. Most of the keys on the keyboard's right side stopped working entirely and key combinations such as Ctrlu made characters appear that should not have appeared. The backspace key exhibited the strangest behavior; it was somehow able to cause the deletion characters in the shell prompt.

I was unable to reboot the computer cleanly so I did a hard shutdown. When I turned the computer on again, I received this message from Grub:

This may well be a hardware problem. First thing to try: yank out the battery and the power plug, wait a few seconds, try again. Second thing: do a memory test, let it stew for a few hours.
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GillesApr 29 '13 at 22:35

I also tried reinstalling Grub with no effect. I'm going to install syslinux.
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Evan TeitelmanApr 29 '13 at 22:55

I ended up installing LILO, which does not seem to be having any problems. The memory test did not find any errors and I don't see any keyboard issues (terminal or shell issues, perhaps?) Is it possible that the hard shutdown caused the Grub issues?
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Evan TeitelmanApr 30 '13 at 2:04

Now I am receiving a kernel panic on boot (see update to question.)
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Evan TeitelmanApr 30 '13 at 11:39

but that file is identical with the one from Archlinux download, so it should
not be an issue. In other words, was not the cause.

Also, first now, notice you have installed LILO, – and guess by that the case
is closed. If not there is always the question about GPT and BIOS + other issues. Did you install it the first time? Can be that there was some tweak
involved on first install that reinstall of GRUB did not fix.

Update1: OK. Fixed. Should work for both 32 and 64-bit ELF's.

When GRUB get to the phase of loading modules it check for license embedded
in ELF file for each module. If non valid is found the module is ignored –
and that specific error is printed. Could be one or more modules are corrupted.

If it is an essential module everything would go bad. Say e.g part_gpt.mod
or part_msdos.mod.

Accepted licenses are GPLv2+, GPLv3 and GPLv3+.

It could of course be other reasons; but one of many could be corrupted module file(s).

It seems like the modules are valid ELF files as they are validated as such
before the license test. As in: if ELF test fail license test is not executed.

Had another issue with modules where I needed to check for various, have
extracted parts of that code and made it into a quick license tester. You could
test each *.mod file in /boot/grub/* to see which one(s) are corrupt.

This code does not validate ELF or anything else. Only try to locate license
string and check that. Further it is only tested under i386/32-bit. The original
code where it is extracted from worked for x86-64 as well – but here a lot is stripped and hacked so I'm not sure of the result. If it doesn't work under 64-bit it should most likely only print License: LICENSE=NONE_FOUND.

I don't recall tweaking my Grub install. Thank you for spending the time to put together that module testing code.
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Evan TeitelmanApr 30 '13 at 12:06

Your answer didn't directly answer my original question so I modified my question a bit. Once this question is eligible for bounty, I will send another 50 reputation your way to repay you for your time. Thanks again.
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Evan TeitelmanApr 30 '13 at 22:36

@EvanTeitelman: Thanks a lot, but no need for bounty points. Keep your hard earned points for a rainy day ;). When it comes to GPT this read might interest you.
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SukminderMay 1 '13 at 1:57

Take a look at this thread over on ubuntugeek.com titled: Boot-Repair – Simple tool to repair frequent boot problems. This tool may be able to help repair what's wrong with your HDD. Looking at the list of features this seems like the easiest way to try and repair your boot partition without getting your hands too dirty.